The snapper that stacks. Hundreds of fish pack into a slow, hovering mass over a single coral head, all facing the same way, and stay there through the day doing absolutely nothing. Come back at dusk and the mass is gone.
The humped forehead and the long-lobed forked tail identify it, though the color is unreliable - the same fish can look dull gray, deep red or almost silver depending on light and mood, and the fins turn bright red when it is excited.
Juveniles look nothing like that. They are yellow above and white below with a dark stripe on the tail, which makes them near-copies of the goatfish they hang around with. Sheltering inside a school of another species is a good trick if you can pass for one of its members.
At night the school disperses over sand and seagrass to hunt crabs, shrimps and small fish, and the same fish return to the same coral head at first light. It is one of the species most often implicated in ciguatera poisoning across the Indo-Pacific, which is what the flag means here.
The species. Lutjanus gibbus (Forsskål 1775) - humpbacked. ETYFish
- steep humped forehead and a deeply forked tail with long lobes
- adults dull red-gray, fins often bright red
- juveniles yellow above and white below with a black tail stripe
- hundreds of fish stacked motionless over one coral head by day
- length up to 57 cm
Why it's threatened
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
